How arbitrary, the stuff of books. How you settle into them, you pour over these visual forms with the hope of understanding what an author has to say about a place, an idea or a newly created personality. Reading is entirely subjective, with characters and scenes offered up by writers and deciphered by our own memories and dreams. How wonderful it is to immerse yourself in a good book, to feel as though the story is going to go on without you if you put it down for a second, even to eat. How exhausting it can be when you feel the characters' pain so accutely and you transpose their fears and dreams onto your own life.
I often imagine what others think of the book I'm reading, what thoughts went through their minds when they read the same pages. I fell in love with a book that was given to me by a good friend and she became a frame of reference for every chuckle, every satisfied sigh and every goosebump that the book ignited. And I thought, when I finished, that this was a shared experience, an inclusive event that made me feel closer to her, the author and my own thoughts.
